Welcome to affirm foundation, presented by Princeton ministries with Dr. Ken Smith. This is Carol Smith, Ken’s wife. Please enjoy.

Two weeks ago, we finished a study in the book of Philippians, and that, I think, was a very encouraging study. And I thought to myself, well, what will we do next? Now, the parables. Won’t that be wonderful, to study the parables of Jesus Christ? And last week, we began by looking at the first parable that Jesus taught, which was the parable of the sower. And we saw that Jesus gave an explanation of that parable. Today we will be looking at his second parable, which is the parable of the wheat and the tares. And I must admit that as I began to study this over the past several weeks, I wondered to myself, why did I ever pick this parable? Because so often the things that we want to hear from Jesus Christ are the things that are a great encouragement to us.

And there certainly are truths in this parable that are great encouragement. But I would also remind you, and as we will be looking at this parable together, that there were many places where Jesus taught. And it cut deeply. This parable cuts deeply. I pray that as we would look at this, that we would remember that this parable came from Jesus Christ himself. Let us pray. Our God and our father, we thank you for your precious word. We thank you for the truths that are contained in it. But more than that, we thank you for Jesus, our savior, who came and lived to die, to be raised again. We come now asking that by your spirit you would speak to our hearts and minds, and that your word would penetrate deeply into our hearts, into our lives, to the end that Christ might be honoured.

For. We ask this in his name. Amen. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Jesus taught this parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and then went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, sir, did you not sow good seed in your fields? How then does it have these tares? He said to them, an enemy has done this. The servant said to him, do you want us then to go and to gather them up? But he said, no, lest while you gather up the tares, you also uproot the wheat. Let both grow together until the harvest.

And at the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, first gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but then gather the wheat into the barn. I was taken out of a pagan background and within 24 hours transplanted into a Christian college. I had never met a Christian in my life. There wasn’t even in our school of 1300 students, one person who carried an oversized Bible who we would joke about. There was no Christian witness in a city of 250,000 people. I was placed in a room with the student chaplain, and they saw me as ripe Pickens. But after two weeks in that setting, I said, I need another roommate. So I found another fellow, his first name John. And John and I roomed together. John said that he had just become a Christian.

We lived for six months in a dorm, 40 guys in the dorm. One night there was a loud knock at the door and someone said, there’s a meeting upstairs. Five minutes. Be there. Everyone in the dormitory was present. The house student stood and he said, we have a thief in this house, and it’s John. There was no jury. There was no evidence other than the fact that he had been in the house. While they concluded things had been stolen, John jumped out of his seat and wrestled this fella to the ground. He said, don’t you ever call me a thief. That night I asked John in the privacy of our room, John, are you a thief? He said, no. I said, I’ll stand with you.

And for a year I stood with him as each evening some student would go by the door and beat on the door. As for a year, they tried to get to the bottom of who the thief was. They never found out who the thief was. After that year, John roomed with someone else. We graduated. And in the providence of God, ten years later, unrelated to college, I met John. We talked about our year together. I said, John, I have to ask you this question. Were you the thief? Yes. John, are you going to church? No. John, how is your walk now with Jesus Christ? Oh, I guess about the same as back in college, probably.

Nothing hurts more for a Christian than to have someone who takes the name of Christ and to live with you, to work with you, spend time with you, to grow up with you, a person that you trust. But as time passes, you find out that the profession was not truthful and that really, they had never walked with Christ. We ask, how can this be? How is it possible that we can grow up side by side? We pray alike, we serve alike, we worship alike, we sing hymns alike. And yet Jesus says, it is possible that within the context of that growing together unseen by the human eye, but seen very clearly by God’s eye, two different seeds growing in the same field. One seed, the seed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that leads to growth and further obedience and trust in Jesus.

But in the same field, weeds are growing, and for a period of time, they look exactly like the wheat, like the good seed. William Barclay says that the weed tears. It is discussed in the parable of the wheat and the tares, that seed of the tare in its earliest stages was next to impossible to distinguish from wheat. Not even the wisest farmer could tell one from the other. Once they were placed in the soil. And as the two grew up side by side, they looked exactly alike. And deep underneath the soil, the roots began to grow, so that the root of the tare, the weed, grew in such a way that it festered and covered the root of the wheat, the good seed. And to pull one up was to pull the other.

And it should come as no surprise to us, as we read scripture, that Satan, we are told, masquerades. He places on a costume, and that costume at times is like angel of light. We’re told in two Corinthians, chapter eleven, verses 14 and 15, that at other times, Satan masquerades as angel of righteousness. You mean to say that there are times when something is full of the light of Christ, seemingly so that something is seemingly righteous and good and perfect? You mean to say that it is possible, in that context for it actually to be a weed? Tares. And that is precisely the teaching that Jesus wants to instruct us on. Because the purpose of a parable is to give a single truth. And the single truth that Jesus is communicating is, friends, there is, right now, two things happening.

The human eye cannot detect it, but the eye of God is able to look into a heart, into a life, and it knows where the good seed has been placed. But at the same time, there is wicked seed, a weed that is growing. And to the human eye, it all looks like light. It all looks like righteousness. How can you and I, who say that we have put our faith in Jesus Christ, begin to sift through our own heart and to look at that seed, that gospel seed that has been placed there, and to begin to distinguish, is it a true wheat, a true seed that is going to grow into the goodness and the likeness of Jesus Christ? Or on the other hand, is it a corrupt seed? Is it a deceitful seed?

Is it a seed that is going to grow into a weed? Well, I’d like to suggest several principles to help you and me begin to distinguish in our own lives, lest we be deceived ourselves. Let me ask you a few questions. Do you seek opportunities to nourish the seed that God has placed in your life? You say, well, help me understand that a little bit. Are you involved in Bible studies? Are you involved in prayer time? Are you concerned about telling other people about Jesus Christ? Are you looking for the atmosphere in which to grow the seed of Jesus Christ? If you say, yes, I look, and I am concerned about what the Bible says. I’m concerned about prayer. I’m concerned about telling others about Christ.

I’m concerned about serving in the name of Jesus Christ, then that may be an indicator to you that a good seed has fallen in your heart. But if you look at your life and you say, you know, the Bible has no interest to me other than Sunday morning at 11:00 but I’ll tell you, I’d never be in a church that didn’t preach from the Bible. Prayer well, I don’t pray much. I don’t pray at all, as a matter of fact. But I’ll tell you, I was really moved by the morning prayer by the pastor, if that is the way you would look at prayer in the study of God’s word. And be careful, lest the seed that is in your heart be a seed that is one of weeds of tares. Let me ask you this question.

Is your conscience tender, or are you getting harder and harder with every day that goes by? Is your heart and mind becoming softer and more pliable and full of the life of Jesus Christ? As you go further and further with him, are you in the midst of a trial or an affliction? Is that difficulty drawing you closer to Christ, or is it drawing you further away from him? How often do you think about your death and how often do you think about heaven? In Deuteronomy 32 vs 29, oh, that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would conceive. Consider their last days. How often do you think about dying and because of Jesus Christ, knowing that someday that will happen, but someday, through Jesus Christ, you will be placed in eternity because of Christ, do you guard your thoughts?

Are you concerned about the things that enter your mind? The magazines you read? The television that you watch? The radio that you listen to? James 11:5 says, when desire has been conceived, it gives birth to sin. How concerned are you with your thought life? Let me ask you this question. Do you have great sins in your life that at one point you consider to be great sins, but today you consider them small things and nothing has changed in your life. Let me ask you, do you regularly, routinely confess your sins of thought, of action before the living God?

If you say yes, those areas in my life that I’m concerned with, then there is a great probability that the seed that has been placed in your heart is the true seed and that it is causing you to grow in obedience and love and service for Jesus Christ. But if the seed that has been deceitfully placed in your heart is not leading to some of the areas that I’ve just listed, then be very careful lest you deceive yourself, lest you think to yourself, yes, I am one of Christ. But you pray not. You study his word not, you serve him not, you worship him not. Be very careful lest the truth of this parable one day be harvested in the most tragic circumstances. It’s interesting that the parable of the wheat and the tares is first told to us.

And then as soon as the parable is presented, there are two parables that follow. One is the parable of the mustard seed, verses 31 and 32 of Matthew 13. The second is the parable of leaven. Now, the parable of the mustard seed is one that usually we think of as being one of. But in this context, Jesus is talking about wickedness, that it grows and grows at the same time as righteousness grows. And the parable of the mustard seed begins with the small mustard seed. But then an aberration occurs to that mustard seed, for a mustard seed grows into a bush. But that is not the parable that we are told. Instead, we are told that it grows into this tree, a mutation, something that is not expected. And what occurs?

The birds of the air come to land on the boughs of that tree. And in the context of Jesus teaching, we learn that it is the birds that represent Satan. And there are many who believe that the parable of the mustard seed in this context is simply telling us that evil is going to grow and grow right until the last. And then we find the parable of the leaven. Leaven, which in each instance in scripture except one, is used to describe sin. And so we learn that this leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened, that again, evil, the evil of sin will continue to grow and grow.

And it is against those borders of the parable of the tare and the wheat that Jesus now comes back and explains to us the purpose of the parable of the tares and the wheat. Now we ask what’s going to happen to the wheat? What will happen to the weeds? He tells us in verse 40. Therefore, as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The son of man will send out his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and those who practice lawlessness. They will be cast into the furnace of fire.

There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth that for those who have had the deceitful weed seed cast in their heart, that they will come to a day when they will stand before this living God and he will declare to them, I know you not, you have been deceived. Now, when is that going to happen? We are told it will occur at the end of the age, which means that as you and I live, there is growing ever increasing greater wickedness at the same time that there is growing the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Are things getting better and better, or are they getting worse and worse? The answer is both, and it will continue to be so until the return of Jesus Christ. Jesus, who will come at the end of the age?

We ask the question, well, what is the end of the age? Let me tell you that the end of the age will not be the mere running down of this earth system. The end of the age is not a mere exhaustion of the life that keeps you and me going. The end of the age, rather, is a conclusion, a termination. The end. And it is coming, according to scripture, in the fullness of time. It will be a day when everything will be gathered together, and wickedness will be bundled together. Matthew Henry says, sinners of the same sort shall be bundled together in the great day, a bundle of atheists, a bundle of hypocrites, a bundle of the cowardly, of the unbelieving, of those who are abominable, of those who are sexually immoral, idolaters of liars.

And on that day, the end of the age, when time will be no more, mankind will behold in the clouds a king, the lion of Judah, Jesus Christ. And upon his brow will be a crown, and his tongue will be like a two edged sword, piercing to the heart. And on that day, angel will cry out, thrust in your sickle, and reap. For the time has come for you to reap. For the harvest of the earth is ripe, and Jesus Christ with his sickle shall come and look upon all of mankind, and he will begin to harvest, and he will draw unto himself every good and perfect seed that has been cast by the spirit of God. That has grown and multiplied and been fruitful.

But also on that day the great reaper shall take and bundle all of those who have been opposed to the gospel of Christ. And upon that day he shall bundle all of the wheat, and he shall place it in a barn for everlasting life. But he shall also bundle all of the chaff and all of the tares and all of the weeds, and he shall place them in a place where they shall be burned and consumed.

It is most important that as people who assemble under the roof of the cross of Jesus Christ, as those who assemble, who bear the name Christian, that we look very closely at the seed that has been sown in our hearts, that it be the true gospel seed, that it be one of wheat that grows and is fruitful, lest we be deceived and find that actually what is growing in our life is weed and tares and chaff. Jesus says to each of us, he who has an ear to hear, let him hear. Let us pray. Our God and our father so often we say, we would like to hear the words of Jesus. And so often the words of Jesus are like a sweet ointment that bring healing.

But other times the words of Jesus cross into our life and cause us to stand silently before you. And Father, I pray that as we have considered this parable of that which is true seed and that which is false, that each of us would look closely at our own life, that we would not be concerned about what other people think, we would not be concerned about maintaining a costume, but instead we would be concerned about the seed that has been placed in our hearts, that it be the true seed. And, Father, if there be any who look in their heart and say, the seed that is, there is weeds, I am consumed in this grip of tares.

That, Father, we would ask that you would come into that life, that you would plant the sweet seed of the gospel, and that there might grow in that heart a true harvest of righteousness, of obedience, of joy, of following Jesus Christ. Christ, Father, help us to have ears to hear, and by the working of your spirit, that you would work in our lives to cause us to grow into that wheat to bring forth great fruitfulness. We thank you and ask for your blessing. In Jesus name, amen.

Thank you for listening to a firm foundation presented by Princeton Ministries. This programming is supported by you, the listener. You may go to our website, princetonministries.org, or send your donation to Princeton Ministries Post Office box 2171, Princeton, New Jersey 08543. That’s Princeton Ministries Post Office box 2171 Princeton, New Jersey. The Lord bless you. And Doctor Smith looks forward to hearing from you.